Tag Archives: Supreme Court

BIO weighed in on three Supreme Court cases in the last few months whose outcome could change the IP landscape for biotechnology companies. BIO’s amicus brief in Nautilus v. Biosig Instruments argues that the petitioner misrepresents the Federal Circuit’s definiteness test and seeks to litigate an issue not properly before this court. Petitioner’s approach radically departs from established law and practice. Finally the petitioner’s approach would destabilize the patent system as it would inject substantial Read More >

Intellectual property featured prominently in 2013’s public discourse. Gene patents, patent trolls, India’s anti-patent actions, and other developments around the world captured headlines. Here are Patently Biotech’s top blog posts written in 2013 by number of views. 1. Myriad Supreme Court Decision: BIO’s Statement 2. Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished 3. What a Patent is Not 4. Gene Patents, Angelina Jolie, and Reality 5. What OxyContin Tells Us About Read More >

Most of the biotechnology world awaits the U.S. Supreme Court’s answer to the Question Presented, “Are human genes patentable,” in the Association of Molecular Pathologists et al. v. Myriad Genetics case. Claims to “human genes” have a canonical form that has been developed over the thirty years during which “genes” (human or otherwise) have been patented under U.S. law: An isolated nucleic acid having a nucleotide sequence that encodes a protein having an amino acid Read More >

Bio IT World just published an article stating that the Myriad Supreme Court case will have little to no effect on whole genome sequencing. “As WGS involves determining the sequence of an individual’s entire genome, there is concern in many quarters that WGS could violate essentially every patent covering an isolated human DNA sequence—of which there are thousands. Indeed, this concern has been raised by scholars, policy analysts and lawyers, including before the Federal Circuit Read More >